North Bay News

We’re excited to announce North Bay Startup has been relaunched and we’ve begun publishing a new podcast: the North Bay Startup Show. As part of our launch, this blog site has been retired and we’ve built a new Mariposta-powered site for all materials going forward.

Again, this blog is archived and we will not be publishing more here. Please visit our new site to find out more about the new show and our other resources. Thank you!

SEBASTOPOL, CA – Local publishing powerhouse O’Reilly Media, known for “putting the coolness in Geek” with its well-known line of tech books, conferences, and journals, is now offering daily giveaways until Christmas for Do-It-Yourself makers with the MAKE Kit-A-Day Giveaway.

If you consider yourself a Maker, Do-It-Yourselfer, Techie, Tinkerer, Gearhead, Engineer, or Crafter, tune into makezine.com each day and leave a comment on the latest kit. From soldering irons to electronic pencils, synthesizer-on-a-chip to a defusable alarm clock (great for simulating those Hollywood-style bomb countdowns), MAKE has got your tinkering itch scratched.Read More »

Every year like clockwork, on the 4th Thursday of November, we get to fly around the country, see people we would never talk to otherwise, stuff our faces, fall asleep, and then go home again afterwards. It’s this odd little American ritual called “Thanksgiving”. That’s the glass half-empty outlook anyway. Since I’m usually a glass half-full sort of fellow, I prefer to look at it differently: we get one day out of the year when it’s actually culturally expected to consider what we have to be thankful for.

A big Thank you to our November sponsor who helps make editorials like this possible: . If you need A/V setup and event planning for your seminar, sales meeting, presentation, or other corporate event, contact DJ Dax.

Think of a dinner party and you probably picture this: a long table filled with guests who don’t know each other very well. Strange food and a slightly uptight atmosphere are also par for the course.

ToutSuite Social Club is reinventing the dinner party concept by interviewing tastemakers and posting videos online.

Founders Susan Quinn and Didier Loustau created ToutSuite as a fresh spin on the dinner party. The popularity of podcasts and cooking shows in the past few years means the club should continue to grow.

ToutSuite’s unique experiences as a food and media business are a great inspiration for any startup. I recently spoke with Susan Quinn about the club and its success.

The popular fast-paced community event featuring multiple speakers that are given 5 minutes to share their passion with the world is coming (back) to Sebastopol on November 16.

The venue is Hopmonk Tavern on Petaluma Ave. (otherwise known as the northbound Hwy 116 route through downtown). There’s no cost to come, and while it looks like the number of available “tickets” has already sold out, you may still be able to slip in.

If you’re interested in presenting, the deadline is November 7. Details here.

For those of us located in the North Bay who are in the digital and online media professions, it can feel rather lonely at times. In the past, a sense of camaraderie and vibrant community felt missing in this area — but, thankfully, a number of groups have sprung up in recent times to bring people together and provide opportunities for education, networking, and just plain fun.

One such group is the Web & Interactive Media Professionals group, otherwise known as WIMP. We caught up with one of the founders of WIMP, Joshua Simmons, to ask him more about how it got started and where it’s headed.